quotations about grief
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
To me, and to the state of my great grief,
Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up: here I and sorrow sit;
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King John
Excess of grief for the deceased is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.
XENOPHON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Whatever sorrow thy young heart have found,
Open it well, this ever-sacred wound
Dealt by dark angels--give thy soul relief.
Naught makes us nobler than a noble grief.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Muse"
It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it.
HILARY THAYER HAMANN
Anthropology of an American Girl
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Return of the King
It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
RUMI
attributed, The Philosophy Book
Ye, O ye
Shall grieve, and ye shall grieve, and ye shall grieve.
Your Life shall bend and o'er his shuttle toil,
A weaver weaving at the loom of grief.
SIDNEY LANIER
"The Jacquerie: A Fragment"
Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature. It becomes a kind of personal weather system. Snow settles in the liver. The bowels grow thick with humidity. Ice congeals in the stomach. Frost spiderwebs in the lungs. The heart fills with warm rain that turns to mist and evaporates through a colder artery.
ADAM RAPP
Nocturne
Joy and grief are things of great hazard and danger in the life of man: The one breaks the heart; the other intoxicates the head.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as if grief could be lessened by baldness.
CICERO
Tusculan Disputations
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.
JOAN DIDION
The Year of Magical Thinking
Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk
With candle-wafters; bring him yet to me,
And I of him will gather patience.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
Grief comes, a giantess, with strength to bind;
She grips our hand and glares into our eyes;
If we but kiss her mouth, she daily dies,
Fades into air, and leaves a flower behind.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Grief"
There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.
JODI PICOULT
My Sister's Keeper
All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness, while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Love is an engraved invitation to grief.
SUNSHINE O'DONNELL
Open Me